Starbucks is Named After a Moby Dick Character | Broken Secrets Starbucks is Named After a Moby Dick Character By Chad Upton | Editor In 1971, an English teacher, a history teacher and writer started a coffee roasting business in Seattle. It’s not surprising that such an intellectual group would have an affinity for classics like Moby Dick. In fact, Starbucks was nearly called Pequod, the name of the whaling ship in Moby Dick. Thankfully, one of the partners rejected the name. Instead, they went with Starbucks, the name of Pequod’s first mate. Although Starbuck was a fictional young quaker from Nantucket, there were a number of real sailors from that era named “Starbuck.” Naming a coffee company was not the first time the Starbuck name was borrowed either. There is an island in the South Pacific, a popular region for whaling, called Starbuck Island. Starbuck Island was heavily mined for phosphate in the late 1800s and many ships were wrecked there. The high frequency of shipwrecks was probably caused by the reefs that surrounded the island, but there is a mythical explanation too.

In Greek Mythology there are seductresses who lure sailors to shipwreck on the coast of their islands. These mythical creatures are called Sirens and the Starbucks logo contains one. Company Information | Starbucks Coffee Company Starbucks Coffee Company Early » Company Information To say Starbucks purchases and roasts high-quality whole bean coffees is very true. That’s the essence of what we do – but it hardly tells the whole story. Our Heritage Every day, we go to work hoping to do two things: share great coffee with our friends and help make the world a little better. It was true when the first Starbucks opened in 1971, and it’s just as true today. Back then, the company was a single store in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market. From just a narrow storefront, Starbucks offered some of the world’s finest fresh-roasted whole bean coffees. The name, inspired by Moby Dick, evoked the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders. In 1981, Howard Schultz (Starbucks chairman and chief executive officer) had first walked into a Starbucks store. From his first cup of Sumatra, Howard was drawn into Starbucks and joined a year later.

In 1983, Howard traveled to Italy and became captivated with Italian coffee bars and the romance of the coffee experience. He had a vision to bring the Italian coffeehouse tradition back to the United States. A place for conversation and a sense of community. A third place between work and home. He left Starbucks for a short period of time to start his own Il Giornale coffeehouses and returned in August 1987 to purchase Starbucks with the help of local investors. From the beginning, Starbucks set out to be a different kind of company. One that not only celebrated coffee and the rich tradition, but that also brought a feeling of connection. Our mission to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Expect More Than Coffee We’re not just passionate purveyors of coffee, but everything else that goes with a full and rewarding coffeehouse experience. We also offer a selection of premium teas, fine pastries and other delectable treats to please the taste buds. And the music you hear in store is chosen for its artistry and appeal. It’s not unusual to see people coming to Starbucks to chat, meet up or even work.

We’re a neighborhood gathering place, a part of the daily routine – and we couldn’t be happier about it. Get to know us and you’ll see: we are so much more than what we brew. We make sure everything we do is through the lens of humanity – from our commitment to the highest quality coffee in the world, to the way we engage with our customers and communities to do business responsibly. Learn More About Us Awards and honors we've received. Our Company 10 Things You Don't Know About Starbucks (But Should!) | Mental Floss 10 Things You Don't Know About Starbucks (But Should!) Image credit: Like us on Facebook Starbucks is the coffee icon people either love or love to hate. The Seattle company opened its first shop in 1971, and all these years later, the coffee giant is still brewing up addictive drinks and venti-sized controversy across the globe. Here are 10 things you might not have known about Starbucks. 1. It Could Have Been "˜Pequods' Nothing says marketing genius like an extremely vague literary reference.

At least that was the logic of Starbucks' original founders — two teachers and a writer — who chose to name their fledgling coffee bean business after a minor character in Moby-Dick. When the first Starbucks opened in Seattle's Pike Place Market in 1971, it didn't sell coffee drinks, just beans. The founders wanted to name the place after Captain Ahab's first mate Starbuck. Right"¦ that guy. Before that, they considered naming it after Ahab's boat, the Pequod, but changed their mind — according to a Starbucks spokesperson — when a friend tried out the tagline "Have a cup of Pequod." 2. About That Logo... At close inspection, the Starbucks logo makes no sense. At closer inspection, it makes even less sense, plus you risk dipping your nose in frap foam. There's some lady with long hair wearing a crown and holding what appears to be two"¦ giant salmon? Decapitated palm trees? Miniature sand worms from Beetlejuice? Conspiracy theorists have had a field day with the cryptic image. Anti-Semitic groups have claimed that the crowned maiden is the biblical Queen Esther, proving that Starbucks is behind various Zionist plots.

Others see parallels to Illuminati imagery. The real story is less about evil conspiracies than prudish graphic design. Since Starbucks was named after a nautical character, the original Starbucks logo was designed to reflect the seductive imagery of the sea. An early creative partner dug through old marine archives until he found an image of a siren from a 16th century Nordic woodcut. She was bare-breasted, twin-tailed and simply screamed, "Buy coffee!" In the ensuing years, Starbucks marketing types decided to tastefully cover up the mer-boobs with long hair, drop the suggestive spread-eagle tail and give the 500-year-old sea witch a youthful facelift. The result? Queen Esther at Sea World. 3. "˜Want a Kidney With That?' For three years, Annamarie Ausnes was just another Sharpie-scrawled name on a paper cup. She would stop by the same Tacoma, Washington, Starbucks a few times a week for a morning lift and make small talk with barista Sandie Andersen. No one would have called them friends. And no one could have guessed what would happen next.

For 20 years, Ausnes had suffered from polycystic kidney disease, a rare condition that invariably ends in kidney failure. In the fall of 2007, the 55-year-old started feeling weak and her doctor confirmed that her kidneys were only operating at 15%. Any lower and she'd have to go on dialysis. Much like a barroom regular spilling his soul to the bartender, Ausnes shared her sad tale with the friendly barista Andersen, who went above and beyond the call of customer service. Andersen immediately got a blood test, and when she found out she was a match, told Ausnes that she wanted to donate her kidney. A few months later, the two women -- barista and casual professional acquaintance -- entered the Virginia Mason Medical Center to swap internal organs. The transplant was a success, leaving the only remaining question: how much of a tip do you leave for a kidney? 4. A Starbucks on Every Corner There are over 16,700 Starbucks locations in more than 50 countries, including Wales, which we're pretty sure isn't a country (update: it is a country).

During a particularly heady period in the late 1990s and early aughts, Starbucks was opening a new store every workday. In 2008 and 2009, as millions of Starbucks customers lost their latte money — and their homes, cars and first born children — to the recession, the coffee giant was forced to shrink just a tad. It closed 771 stores worldwide and has plans to close a couple hundred more. Australia was particularly hard-hit, losing 61 of its 84 Starbucks in July 2008. At least they still have giant beer and koalas. But before you start feeling sorry for the Seattle-based mega-company, consider this statistic gathered by Harper's magazine in 2002, confirming the nagging suspicion that Starbucks is stalking you: 68 of Manhattan's 124 Starbucks are located within two blocks (!) of another Starbucks. [Image credit: Starbucks Everywhere ] 5. Hand in the Tip Jar Back in 2008, a San Diego judge ordered Starbucks to pay back $86 million in tips (plus interest) to over 100,000 of its California baristas.

For years, Starbucks had a policy of spreading the tip jar love among all employees, even shift supervisors. The cash and coins (and occasional Skittles) were pooled weekly and divvied out according to how many hours the employee had clocked, adding up to an extra $1.71 an hour. An ex-barista filed a class-action suit in 2006 citing that supervisors aren't entitled to tips under California law. The Super Court judge agreed, and dropped the $105 million bomb on Starbucks in a curt four-paragraph ruling. Starbucks called the suit "fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and reason," citing the fact that supervisors also make coffee and serve customers. In a rare win for corporate American (ahem), the judge's ruling was reversed a year later by the Court of Appeals, who agreed that supervisors "essentially perform the same job as baristas." Just don't tell that to their girlfriends. 6. Who's "˜So Vain' Now? Carly Simon is famous for her transparently personal "you-done-me-wrong" ballads in which unnamed exes like Cat Stevens and James Taylor drag her heart through the dirt.

But few people expected the 64-year-old crooner to lavish the same overwrought emotion on Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. In 2009, Simon filed a lawsuit against Starbucks, claiming the coffee chain had failed to adequately promote her album This Kind of Love, produced and distributed by Starbucks' house label, Hear Music. But before she called her lawyer, Simon sent a series of handwritten notes to CEO Schultz, including the following quasi-Haiku quoted in the New York Times: "Howard, Fraud is the creation of Faith/ And then the betrayal.

Carly." For its part, Starbucks said it stocked Simon's CD at over 7,000 stores, put it on heavy rotation in the droning Starbucks soundtrack and even kept the slow-selling album on the shelves way past its expiration date just to be "nice." In the end, it was Starbucks' vice president of brand content Chris Bruzzo who ended up sounding like a Carly Simon song: "We're very disappointed that Carly has decided to file this suit because we worked very hard and put a lot of time, and energy, and effort from the music team and thousands of stores behind giving this album its best shot in finding its audience," Bruzzo said. Put a samba beat to that and he's got something. 7. "˜Forbidden' Latte When a Starbucks affiliate opened a 200-square-foot coffee stand inside the walls of China's Forbidden City in 2000, the proud nation of 1.3 billion reacted as if someone had spilled a Venti Caramel Macchiato on its collective crotch. A nationwide survey found that 70% of Chinese thought that a coffee shop had no business in the 600-year-old UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A news anchor on China's state-run television even led an online protest to the caffeinated intruder, saying that Starbucks "undermined the Forbidden City's solemnity and trampled over Chinese culture." Turns out that Starbucks only opened the mini-outpost at the invitation of Forbidden City Museum officials who were "testing the waters" for more commercial interests in the 178-acre site. The test concluded that the waters were teeming with coffee-hating Chinese sharks. In 2007, the Forbidden City Starbucks (OK, that does sound a little funny) closed its tiny bamboo doors. 8. Undercover Bux The owner of Victrola Coffee Roasters in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle knew something was brewing when a team of known Starbucks employees started hanging out at his shop and scribbling notes into a conspicuous folder labeled "OBSERVATIONS." A few months later, the Starbucks outlet down the street closed up for renovations. The "slutty mermaid" sign came down and a new one went up: 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. Did someone actually buy out a Starbucks in Seattle? Was this a rare victory for little coffee? What do you think?

This was Starbucks being Starbucks without being Starbucks. The hope is that brand-averse hipsters will ignore the obvious Starbuckiness of the new store and concentrate on the new wine and beer selection (inspired by Victrola). Plans are in the works for additional stealth Starbucks in Seattle. 9. Reading Material Back in the '90s, Starbucks tried to sell a paper version of Microsoft's online magazine Slate, which nobody read. In 1997, it started stocking selections from Oprah's Book Club, which nobody bought. And in 1999, it tried to publish its very own literary magazine called Joe, a convincingly high-brow, well-written, stylish rag that only lasted three issues. 10. The Starbucks-Peet's Connection Remember the first time you saw The Empire Strikes Back? Luke's right hand goes hurdling down that bottomless vent thingy, he's holding on for his life, and Vader is going on about the power of the Dark Side. Then he drops the shocker-to-end-all-shockers: "I am your father." NOOOOOOOOOOO! All you Peet's Coffee & Tea fans are about to have your own one-hand Luke moment.

Back in 1970, Starbucks co-founder Jerry Baldwin worked at the original Berkeley location of Peet's, the creator of the American specialty coffee concept. When Baldwin and his buddies Zev Siegel and Gordon Bowker decided to open their own coffee shop in Seattle in 1971, they bought all their raw beans from Alfred Peet. But here's the kicker. Baldwin actually bought Peet's in 1984, then he sold Starbucks in 1987. He was the chairman of Peet's until 2001 when the store went public and he became the director. In other words, "Peet's, I am your father!" So if you're one of those people who hates Starbucks and loves Peet's Coffee & Tea or one of those people who hates Peet's and loves the bux, it turns out you're only hating yourself. Starbucks Coffee Company Timeline History | Twoop A second Starbucks store is opened in Seattle. 1975 The first store moves to a new location in Pike Place market, where it remains to this day. Early 1980s Zev Siegel leaves the company.

Jerry Baldwin takes over management of the company and functions as CEO. Gordon Bowker remains involved as a co-owner but other projects take up most of his time, including the launch of his new microbrewery, The Redhook Ale Brewery. Sept. 1982 Howard Schultz joins the company, taking charge of marketing and overseeing the retail stores. 1984 Starbucks acquires the five stores in San Francisco’s Peet’s Coffee and Tea chain. During this period, Schultz makes several attempts to convince the original owners to start selling coffee beverages but they prefer to keep the focus on retail coffee products. April 1984 Starbucks opens its fifth store, the first one in downtown Seattle. Schultz finally convinces the owners to test an espresso bar, making this Starbucks the first to sell coffee beverages. It becomes a huge success. Late 1984 The Starbucks founders are still resistant to installing espresso bars in other Starbucks locations and Schultz becomes increasingly frustrated. He has visited the espresso bars of Milan, Italy and has a vision of bringing Italian-style espresso bars to America. Late 1985 Schultz leaves Starbucks and starts the Il Giornale Coffee Company. Jan.

1986 Schultz raises enough seed money to open several Il Giornale coffee houses. Starbucks founders Baldwin and Bowker support his new endeavor and invest money in the new company. April 1986 The first Il Giornale store opens. March 1987 Baldwin and Bowker decide to sell the Starbucks Coffee Company, with Baldwin keeping the Peet’s segment of the company. Aug. 1987 Schultz acquires Starbucks and rebrands all of his Il Giornale coffee houses with the Starbucks name. 1987 Starbucks opens locations in Vancouver, British Columbia and Chicago, Illinois. 1992 Starbucks goes public with its initial public stock offering. At this time it has 165 outlets. 1996 The first Starbucks opens outside of North America in Tokyo, Japan. 1996 Starbucks drive-through locations are introduced. Sept. 1997 Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz publishes a book called Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. 1998 The first Starbucks in Beijing, China is opened.

2000 Starbucks sues San Francisco cartoonist Kieron Dwyer for copyright and trademark infringement after she creates a parody of the company’s trademark mermaid logo. The case is eventually settled. April 2003 Starbucks purchases Seattle’s Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia from AFC Enterprises and turns them all into Starbucks outlets. May 2003 By this time, Starbucks has more than 6,400 outlets worldwide. May 17, 2004 Starbucks baristas at the 36th and Madison store in Manhattan organize the first Starbucks barista union. They claim that the starting wage of $7.75 per hour is not a living wage in New York City and that the company does not guarantee a minimum number of hours. July 22, 2004 The Retail Workers’ Union IU/660 files an unfair labor practice suit against Starbucks, alleging the company threatened wage cuts and bribed employees in order to influence the results of the barista’s union vote. Oct. 4, 2004 XM Satellite Radio and Starbucks Coffee Company announce the debut of the Starbucks “Hear Music” channel on XM Radio.

The station will feature 24 hour music programming featuring an “ever-changing mix of the best new music and essential recordings from all kinds of genres.” Aug. 2005 After Starbucks prints a quote from Armistead Maupin on its cups as part of their “The Way I See It” promotion, the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America protests. The quote reads: “My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don’t make that mistake yourself. Life’s too damn short.” Sept. 8, 2005 Starbucks announces plans to donate funds and supplies to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Plans include monetary donations over $5 million as well as donations of coffee, water, and tea products. Oct. 21, 2005 ABC’s 20/20 airs the results of an investigation into coffee outlets serving regular coffee when decaf is ordered. One Starbucks outlet is found to be serving decaf loaded with caffeine.

A Starbucks spokeswoman says: “in two samples taken by 20/20, the caffeine content was consistent with regular, not decaffeinated, coffee … We believe this error to be an isolated incident and an unfortunate occurrence that we take seriously. We have sent information to our stores to re-emphasize our operating procedures.” 2006 The company creates Starbucks Entertainment and it is one of the producers on the film Akeelah and the Bee. March 2008 A California court orders the company to pay $100 million in back tips to baristas who claimed that shift-supervisors were allowed to keep a portion of their tips, a violation of state labor laws. Similar lawsuits are filed in Massachusetts and Minnesota. Jan. 2012 A Starbucks exec says that Starbucks supports the legalization of same sex marriage. As a result, the National Organization for Marriage calls for a boycott of the company and its stock. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz responds to the controversy: “If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38 percent you got last year, it’s a free country. You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much.” Oct.

2012 Reuters does an investigation and finds that Starbucks only paid £8.6 million in corporate taxes in the United Kingdom over 14 year allegedly by charging high licensing fees to the UK Starbucks branches and being able to declare a loss as a result. 2013 Fortune magazine names Starbucks one of the top companies to work for. June 2014 The European Commission launches an investigation into the company’s tax practices in the Netherlands, along with several other international corporations. March 19, 2014 The company announces that they are teaming up with Oprah Winfrey to create Teavana® Oprah Chai tea. March 30, 2014 Total stores worldwide as of this date: 20,519. References 5 Things You Didn't Know: Starbucks - AskMen AskMen Messages You have no messages Notifications You have no notifications 5 Things You Didn't Know: Starbucks 5 Things You Didn't Know: Starbucks 2 Page 1 of 2 They are largely responsible for turning a diner’s 50-cent cup of joe into a travesty, or at the very least, a pedestrian pursuit.

Their "stores" seem to be everywhere, and they’re populated by coffee snobs on both sides of the counter. They appear either indifferent to, or beyond the reach of, fluctuating economies. They are accused of everything from the annoying (market saturation) to the serious (anti-competition), yet Starbucks — the world’s biggest coffee peddler — keeps on peddling. There may be no better example of the company’s imperialist domination — and the scorn they sometimes inspire — than the shocking installation of a Starbucks store in Beijing’s Forbidden City in 2000. You can’t blame Starbucks for salivating over the real estate; almost 9 million people visited the former home to 24 different Chinese emperors in 2006. Nonetheless, it took seven years of protesting, 500,000 signatures and a refusal on Starbucks’ part to sell other brands to finally drive them out in 2007. Love 'em or hate 'em, here are five things you may not know about Starbucks, your friendly, ubiquitous coffee house.

1- On average, two new Starbucks have opened every day since 1987 Starbucks has been around since 1971, but it wasn’t aggressive about expansion until 1987, when the company came under the ownership of its current chairman, Howard Schulz. At that time, there were only nine Starbucks stores. Today, there are about 14,396 (give or take a few). Divide that number by 20 years, or 7,300 days and, after rounding up, you get an average of 2 stores per day opening every day for the last 20 years. Naturally, this figure does not include the few stores that, for whatever reason, were shut down. 2- Its name comes from Moby Dick Confirmed by the company’s current fact sheet, Starbucks was named for the first mate of the Pequod in Melville’s Moby Dick. The question is, why? After all, the company seems more like Captain Ahab than Starbuck.

In the famous novel , Starbuck and Ahab are at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum: the first mate is superstitious and conservative, Ahab is narcissistic and monomaniacal. Starbuck is practical, opposing Ahab’s desire to commit the Pequod to circling the world’s oceans in search of the white whale in favor of a commitment to harpooning whales they can sell on the Nantucket Market. Ahab is single-minded, bent on not only killing the white whale, but also on relieving mankind of the source of its evil. Swap out a few of the right words above with terms like "market domination" and "its competition," and you have Ahab’s, the world’s biggest coffee peddler. The only ostensible Starbuck-like thing about Starbucks is the conservative evolution of its logo. It used to feature a bare-breasted mermaid but has, over time, developed a degree of modesty that would please the Pequod’s first mate: Initially, her hair covered her breasts , then they were cut out of the frame altogether.

3- Its founders sold Starbucks in 1987 to build Peet's Coffee & Tea Here’s the condensed company time line: 1966: Alfred Peet opens Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Berkeley, California. 1971: Jerry Baldwin and two other friends of Alfred Peet open the first Starbucks in Seattle. 1982: Howard Schultz joins Starbucks. 1984: Baldwin et al buy out Peet’s. 1987: Baldwin et al sell Starbucks to Schultz to focus on building Peet’s. It's not all about coffee and biscotti at Starbucks... FREE Starbucks Business Essay Starbucks, the coffee making and serving company took its unique name from a character of the novel â€œMoby Dickâ€ and has its roots in Seattle, Washington. Here you can still find the very first coffee shop at the pike place market, which has been opened since 1971. In 1987, Starbucks was bought by Howard Schultz and ever since has been exploring all over the United States.

Today Starbucks is the most known chain of coffeehouses around the world (Lambert, Emily â€œThe buck stops hereâ€, Forbes 2003 Volume 171, p.52). There are over 6500 coffee stores all over North America and 30 other countries around the world. According to Fortune Magazine three new stores are opened every day making Starbucks biggest competitor Starbucks itself by cutting off up to 30% of neighboring store` s sales. The companyâ€™s strategy is to â€œblanket an area completely, even if the stores cannibalize one another` s businessâ€, as it â€œcuts down on delivery and management costs, shortens customer lines at individual stores, and increases foot traffic for all the stores in an areaâ€ (Daniels, Cora â€œMr. Coffee, The man behind the $ 4.75 Frappuccino makes the 500â€Fortune 2003 Volume 147).

This is probably why Starbucks became so popular and famous with an unbelievably high average visit rate of 18 times a month by a typical consumer (growing 6-8% a year) and a minimum cost of advertising (only 1% of their annual revenues). No other business company reaches the numbers that Starbucks has. In March 2003, they even made it to Fortune Magazineâ€™s top 10 of 500 of America` s most admired companies for the first time. . Starbucksâ€™ sales have kept on increasing up to 20% a year ever since they went public in 1992 (Holmes, Stanley â€œPlanet Starbucks to keep up the growth, it must go global quicklyâ€, Business Week, 2002, issue 3798). Page 1 of 10 How Did Starbucks Coffee Get Its Name? - CulinaryLore.com CulinaryLore.com » All CulinaryLore Categories » Food History » How Did Starbucks Coffee Get Its Name? Posted on 18 Jun 2015 03:09 Waiter, Waitress, Server: What's the Correct Term?

The name Starbucks for a coffee shop is not exactly one you'd pull out of thin air. Maybe whoever started it was a big fan of Battlestar Galactica? No, more likely, whoever created the Starbuck character for Battlestar was a fan of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. This was exactly where Starbucks Coffee got its name, as well. Starbuck was the name of the first-mate of the whale-ship Pequod, the ship in Moby Dick. The background of the Starbucks Coffee founders would seem enough to suggest a connection to this literary classic. The company was started by three Seattle men, Gordon Bowker, Jerry Baldwin, and Zev Siegl. Bowker was a writer, Baldwin was an English teacher, and Siegl was a history teacher. They opened the first store in 1971, and called it Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spices. This early store was a retail location that sold premium coffee beans, coffee equipment, and a drip coffee maker made by the Swedish company Hammarplast. They got their beans from Peet's, a coffee retail store founded in in Berkley California in 1966 by Alfred Peet.

In fact, this first Starbucks store was simply an imitation of Peet's, with which the trio had been impressed. They ended up buying Peet's in 1984, and then decided to focus on the Peet's brand, selling Starbucks to Howard Schultz. Schultz had been Starbucks's director of marketing in 1982. He thought that Starbucks should sell not only coffee beans but also espresso. The owners weren't interested, so Schultz left in 1985 to start his own coffee bar chain. Once he acquired Starbucks in 1987, he converted it into a coffee bar, and began rapidly expanding, turning the company into the huge force it is today. Story of the Starbucks Name It was Bowker, the writer, who came up with the name Starbucks. Bowker, looking at an old mining map of the Cascades and Mount Rainer area, saw a town called Starbo. It reminded him of the first-mate in Moby Dick. He liked the way the name sounded, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with coffee. The three founders approved the name and added an "s" to make it sound better.

In their early advertising material, Starbucks referred to "the coffee-loving first mate named Starbuck. The Herman Melville Society took umbrage to this and contacted the company, telling them that Starbuck does not drink coffee anywhere in Moby Dick. Before you read all the way through Moby Dick again, trying to catch Starbuck enjoying a cuppa joe, it's true: He never drinks coffee in the book. More Food History Posts Starbucks almost named after Moby-Dick doomed ship Peqoud | Daily Mail Online comments It's the largest coffee house in the world, but Starbucks may have had a very different story had one of its founders had his way. Writer Gordon Bowke, who co-founded the company in 1971, originally wanted to name the company Peqoud, after the doomed whaleship in Moby-Dick. Luckily, his business partners settled on the name of the ship's first mate instead. Global: Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 50 countries, including over 11,000 in the U.S.

According to Howard Schultz's book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, Mr Bowker suggested the name Pequod to his then-creative partner, Terry Heckler, who responded: 'No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!' RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share After a brainstorming session, Mr Bowker's co-founders, teachers Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl, decided Captain Ahab's first mate Starbuck would be the name of the then-unknown brand. A classic: Moby-Dick, by American author Herman Melville, was first published in 1851 It was not the only inspiration the entrepreneurs found in the unusual name. It also inspired Starbucks' famed green and white logo, which features a Siren from Greek Mythology. As the story goes, Sirens lured sailors to shipwreck off the coast of an island in the South Pacific, also called Starbuck Island. The company, however, could have gone by many different names with founders so captivated by the Herman Melville classic.

Stubb, Flask, Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo, Pip and Fedallah are among the other characters in the story about Captain Ahab's search for a monstrous sperm whale wandering the seas after it destroyed his boat and bit off his leg. Starbucks, it seems, proved a wise choice. The company later changed hands and Mr Schultz became the company's sole owner when he bought out the three founders in 1987. Starbucks went on to become the largest coffee house company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 50 countries, including more than 11,000 in the U.S. THE MAIN CHARACTERS IN MOBY-DICK: Moby-Dick, first published in 1851 by American author Herman Melville, is peppered with unusual names that could have replaced Starbuck. Its main characters include: Ishmael - The narrator, and a junior member of the crew of the Pequod Captain Ahab - Lost his leg to Moby Dick and is in a search for the monstrous sperm whale Starbuck - The first mate of the Pequod.

A Quaker who believes that Christianity offers a way to interpret the world around him Stubb - The second mate of the Pequod, characterised by his good humour Flask - The third mate of the Pequod with a confrontational attitude that earned him the nickname King-Post Queequeg - Starbuck’s skilled harpooner and Ishmael’s best friend, a former prince drom South Sea island Tashtego - Stubb’s harpooner and a Gay Head Indian Daggoo - Flask’s harpooner Moby-Dick in Pop Culture Edd McCracken 03-09-15 Call me illuminated. I’ve just finished Moby-Dick and, like many before me , I feel like I’ve been on a voyage to the end of the world and back. Aside from the head-turningly modern mish-mash of styles and form that Herman Melville tosses at the reader – adventure story, natural history, art history, theology, journalism, stage play, whaling textbook, tragedy, environmentalist tract, philosophy to name but a few – one of the most startling things about the book is the references. Yep, big unctuous vats full of references.

The Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, Shakespeare, Dante, Seneca and Kant all get a look in. Barely a paragraph goes by without Melville dropping some heavyweight allusion. References anchor this most slippery of novels. It’s fitting, then, that since its publication in 1851 Moby-Dick has in turn become one of the most culturally referenced works of literature. Beams of culture are refracted through this book, linking the distant past and the cultural present. It is a rare work that is the hinge between the musings of a Roman statesmen and that of a fictional civil servant from Pawnee, Indiana. Moby-Dick has opened up its gaping maw and has chomped down on the cultural world without mercy. It’s serrated-teeth marks are everywhere, in plain view and lurking just under the surface. So, here are some of those pop culture references (but not all: see also Family Guy; Futurama’s Mobius Dick episode; the second half of Jaws, etc) that catch us all in a hemp rope noose and drag us back to the original. Starbucks Let’s start with an obvious one.

Every time you sip one of their skinny lattes, raise your cardboard cup to the Pequod’s sensible, grounded and ultimately doomed first mate, whom the coffee store is named after. Tom and Jerry Thanks to this barmy 1962 Tom and Jerry homage, Dicky Moe (set on the Komquat), you’re never too young to learn about suicide voyages, megalomaniac dictators, and mentally ill captains. As a bonus, it includes a child-friendly re-enactment of Fedallah’s macabre fate. Moby One of Moby-Dick’s great themes is Don’t Mess With Nature. Fitting then that Herman Melville’s great-great-great-grandnephew is the vegan, animal-rights activist musician Moby, who took his forefather’s message and name to heart. Ron Swanson and Homer Simpson (Parks and Recreation and The Simpsons) Forget CliffsNotes. Here’s all you need to know about Moby-Dick’s true meaning. Rosebud Speaking of “frou frou symbolism,” could Moby-Dick be responsible for naming one of cinema’s most famous metaphors? Bear with me on this one.

Orson Welles was a huge fan of Moby-Dick. He staged a stripped-down version of it on the London stage in 1955. He made a cameo in John Huston’s 1956 film as Father Mapple to deliver Melville’s booming sermon on Jonah. Welles also attempted to film it in 1971, but like many of his later projects, like a stove-in ship, it was abandoned. But before tackling the novel head on, it may have provided him with one of his most lasting legacies. In Chapter 91 the Perquod meets a ship whose name is familiar to anyone who knows the opening words and closing shot of Welles’ Citizen Kane. The name, of course, is Rosebud. Blue (Moby Dick) by Jackson Pollock The jury is out on whether Pollock ever read Moby-Dick, but at the very least he was taken with its big themes of paranoia, uncertainty, brooding, and potential violence. The dominant colour scheme for all these things is obviously blue and black. Not white and gold.

Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin A crueller critic might suggest that Zeppelin drummer Jon Bonham’s 15 minute drum solo is accurately capturing some of the tediousness of some of Melville’s more digressionary chapters. See also Mastadon’s album Leviathan. Moby Dick: Cantata by Bernard Herrmann A more generous critic might suggest composer Herrmann (who wrote several scores for Hitchcock including Psycho and North by Northwest) captures the grandeur of the novel much better than Led Zep. Star Trek Kahn Noonien Singh, Captain James T Kirk’s nemesis from Star Trek, read Moby-Dick once. And boy did he go on about it. Quoting Captain Ahab’s hate-twisted words has proven to be a handy shortcut for film makers wanting to pepper bad guys with a bit of obsessive mania. The team behind Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ordered a bucket load of Ahab seasoning. Khan’s hatred for Kirk is on such a Melvillian scale, he quotes from Moby-Dick with his last breath: “From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee… for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee…“. Okay Khan, we get it, you read it.

The Baader-Meinhof Gang Started Moby-Dick but never made it to the end? If so, you’re in revolutionary company. On the evidence of their chosen code names, the Baader-Meinhof gang – a left-wing group in Germany in the 1970s who committed a string of assassinations and terrorist acts – never bothered to find out the true fate of their alter-egos. While in prison they adopted names based on Moby-Dick characters: Ahab meant Andreas Baader, their de facto leader, Starbuck was used for Holger Meins, and so on. Leviathan, another name Melville uses for the white whale, was code for the State, which the gang was committed to bringing down. True to the spirit of their doomed monikers, their success mirrored that of the Perquod’s crew. Baader and Meins died in prison, a fate echoed by most of the Gang. Meanwhile, the State lived on. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach Elsewhere in fictionville, Guert Affenlight certainly read Moby-Dick all the way through. Over and over and over again.

For the president of the fictional Westish College, it takes on religious significance. So much so, he definitively refers to it as The Book. Harbach’s tale of confined men -confined by a baseball team, by Midwestern geography, by closeted homosexual relationships, by expectations, and by student-mentor dynamics – also constantly turns back to Melville’s novel of men confined by a ship to orientate itself. Affenlight is a Melville scholar who, in the 1960s, discovered a lost speech by the great man and wrote The Sperm Squeezers, a (fictional) seminal text on Moby-Dick’s homosexual undercurrents. Westish College features a statue of the author, and their baseball team is called The Harpooners in honour of him. And upon Affenlight’s death, his daughter reads Chapter 23 from The Book, The Lee Shore, as they bid him farewell. In many ways, The Art of Fielding is a beautiful expression of how the love of a book can define a life. Ahab by MC Lars MC Lars uses the power of hip-hop to pry open Ahab’s inner monologue.

For a man who skilfully leapt between narrative styles, if rap had been around in the 1850s, Melville would probably have used it. Choice couplets include: “Call me Ahab, what, monomaniac /Obsessed with success unlike Steve Wozniak”; and “The first one to stop him gets this gold doubloon/Now excuse me while I go be melancholy in my room!” ____________________ Want more bookish goodness, news, posts about special book deals, and the occasional puppy reading pic? Follow us on Facebook : We pin! Boards of book looks, literary cats, crafts, book dates, and more ideas. Give us a follow on Pinterest .

Question: Which company, opened in 1971, shares its name with a Moby Dick character?
Answer: Starbucks